Modeling photonic links in Verilog-A

Abstract

Integrated photonic links are a promising emerging technology that can relieve the interconnect bottleneck in core-to-core and core-to-memory communications of modern processors. Developing and optimizing photonic link systems requires simulation of integrated photonic devices side-by-side with electronic devices at the device, circuit, and system level. In previous efforts to simulate photonic links, the optical and the electrical signals were treated in separate simulators, which resulted in some loss of accuracy. In this thesis, a library of photonic device models is developed in Verilog-A for use in seamless simulation of opto-electronic circuits in Cadence.